The media and Hollywood do little but feed and cultivate attitudes of self-absorption. Academics also foster self-absorption in their college students who now can’t read literary classics because the content is too “triggering” for their tender emotions. We should ask: How on earth can people have real relationships or establish any kind of true community if everyone is so obsessed with their own delicate sensibilities? The answer is: we can’t.

Healthy personal relationships need a foundation of common reality and common language through which people can communicate. Most of all, they need a common belief that there is inherent worth and dignity in all human beings, not just themselves.

So as more folks sink deeper into believing life is all about them, they are more liable to end up like Bruce Jenner: obsessed by the urge to project an imagined persona everywhere and eager to suck up whatever oxygen might be in any given room. Or like abortionists who must callous their souls in order to live day to day.

As the Arthur Ashe award in honor of Jenner’s gender transition proved the other night, we seem close to hitting rock bottom. Turning one’s fetish into a cause celebre might be a nervy thing to do, but it doesn’t resemble the virtue we’ve traditionally called “courage.” All the less so because of the heaping helpings of adulation, support, doting, protection, fawning, and heavy shielding the media and special handlers have been giving Jenner for doing so.

In fact, nary a word has been spoken about Bruce Jenner’s fault in a February car crash that killed a woman and left several others injured. (Though one of the drivers involved has publicly pointed out that Jenner’s lack of personal responsibility made him ill suited for the award.)

Against this scenario of craven self-worship and self-obsession, it shouldn’t surprise us that a top abortionist and director at Planned Parenthood would brag about harvesting organs from unborn children. Deborah Nucatola told undercover associates of the Center for Medical Progress how she personally goes about this with babies up to 24 weeks gestation. She was videotaped saying:

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

It’s a ghoulish business that shocks people of conscience. But we live less and less in a society that respects and understands the value of conscience. Instead, Planned Parenthood reflects the attitude of Dr. Josef Mengele who conducted experiments on prisoners in Nazi Germany. And, of course, of its founder Margaret Sanger who was a full blown eugenics enthusiast whose counsel the Nazis sought in the 1930’s.

How did our culture get to this place? I think, in part, by accepting the antiquated notion of “modernity” or “progress” as though it is something enlightened. Using abortion as a means of sexual “liberation” only serves to numb us, to separate ourselves from the humanity of others. There’s no room for true human connection in such putrefied places devoid of human worth.

This month six adult children from same sex households are submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court opposing same sex marriage. Two of them — Robert Oscar Lopez and Rivka Edelman — have co-authored/edited a just released book which explores the fallout from the social experimentation we are all living through. Please click here and “look inside” the text of Jephthah’s Daughters at Amazon. I hope you decide to buy a copy.

The book is a rich anthology of articles and testimonials that describe experiences not discussed in the media. According to Lopez, “We can help the reader understand why something viewed by so many as beneficial was actually harmful to so many more.”

I am honored to be a contributor, having written the introduction to the chapters on society and the globe. There are six sections in the book. The first, “Children,” explores the experiences of children who are separated from at least one natural parent. This can happen in many different ways, but children of same sex households are separated from a parent by design. Alana Newman who blogs at AnonymousUs.org was donor-conceived and wrote the introduction to this section.

Section III “Society,” reviews the whole Pandora’s box that same sex marriage is unleashing against healthy human relationships, against children, and against freedom. Some of the vehicles are transgenderism, polygamy, incest, and sex education as a means of state control of children. Section IV, “Globe,” discusses the emergence of the LGBT ideology throughout the world and what the growing commodifying of children means for human freedom (hint: a form of bondage, a form of slavery.) Yours truly wrote the introduction, and I suppose the bottom line I can’t escape is that this movement is putting us on the fast track to centralized power, and probably on a global scale. In many ways, it’s a central planner’s dream come true.

Section V, entitled “Gays” includes reflections by those whom the LGBT movement claims to help, but does not. Jean-Pier Delaume-Myard notes in his introduction that the LGBT agenda actually leads to inequality for gays, not equality.

Section VI, “Bards” explores the McCarthyism of the LGBT agenda — in the arts, the media, academia and throughout society. Its introduction is written by Michelle Shocked, a world-renowned singer-songwriter twice nominated for Grammy awards. She asks: “How did a crusader for children’s rights become the target of a smear campaign? Answer: The same way a champion for artists rights did. By identifying the nexus of non-existent nonsense that is much easier to attach ad hominem to than the question at hand.”

This is an extremely important book with perspectives that have been overlooked — and, in fact, blocked — throughout the entire debate on marriage. Bobby Lopez founded the International Children’s Rights Institute because, at root, his fight is really about the rights of children. Children have the right to know their origins. And nobody has the right to turn them into commodities.

Congressman Henry Hyde shares an issue of the Human Life Review with Mother Teresa

Forty years ago, aghast at the Roe Vs. Wade decision, James Patrick McFadden founded a journal called The Human Life Review. It’s a dynamic publication with writers from a wide array of backgrounds: physicians, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, philosophers, journalists, academics, retirees, and many others from all walks of life. Today Jim McFadden’s daughter, Maria McFadden Maffucci is editor. Click here to read my interview with her, published today at The Federalist.

You’ve probably all noticed how abortion is becoming increasingly celebrated by forces in the culture who are so invested in it. Planned Parenthood is pushing a campaign for women to put their “abortion stories” in a happy light. The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story about abortion “doulas” or hand-holders for women getting abortions, basically to serve as accomplices for the procedure. (After that, of course, they’re out of the picture. The post-abortion women often turn to pro-life folks to help them heal emotionally and spiritually from the trauma.) There was a summer box office flop called “Obvious Child” that attempted to be a comedy that featured the abortion of the main character. Lately, there’s been no shortage of in-your-face “abortion is good” propaganda. The intent is for women to ingest it, buy it, and live with it so that Planned Parenthood can go about it’s multi-billion dollar abortion industry.

The above are just a very few items discussed in my interview with Maria. The Human Life Review deals with all issues related to human life and dignity, including assisted suicide, euthanasia, and eugenics. And the dark truth is that we are headed towards a future in which eugenics is more blatantly promoted and practiced. Here’s just one small excerpt that gives you an idea of how Jim McFadden expected it all to play out. As Obamacare pushes a culture of death on us all, we can see how Jim McFadden was prescient indeed:

Stella: Is there any particular human life issue that you see as the biggest threat facing human dignity in the coming years?

Maria: I would just say the biggest threat is what’s happening at end of life or with sudden disabling and not having life support offered. Obamacare and incentives for saving money are reaching a boiling point. How are you going to feel safe? My father was prescient about that, that a doctor would become either a “quality of life” doctor or a “sanctity-of-life” doctor. And there are going to be fewer and fewer sanctity-of-life doctors. If you are a sanctity-of-life doctor, who is going to back you up, hospital-wise, medicine-wise, insurance-wise?